Episode 131: Reclaiming Holistic Wisdom Through Embodiment and Clarification with Sadie Adams
What do you do when you’ve tried all of the conventional and holistic strategies but yet your health issues haven’t completely been resolved? Sometimes deep inner work is required, especially if you’re struggling with Adrenal Fatigue and burnout. But if you’re someone who just can’t slow down, what’s the likelihood of you taking the time to explore this inner work?
Quarantine life has given me the time to do this inner work that quite frankly, I may have never done otherwise, and some of that inner work has been done with the help of my dear friend and returning guest, Sadie Adams. Sadie joined me in Episode 117 where we talked about nurturing natural beauty through calm presence & authentic self-expression.
In this episode, Sadie returns to the show sharing insights and wisdom on how to reclaim holistic wisdom. Sadie draws from her vast education, wisdom, and her many gifts to help people self-heal with:
Repatterning
Embodiment
Integrating the body, mind, and spirit
Using modalities like breathwork, meditation, and movement, she helps people come back into their bodies to reclaim their presence, choices, and freedom.
You’ll hear how she’s helping me:
Repattern and release a “need to / have to” mindset which in turn helps me with relaxation, tapping into my parasympathetic system to ultimately help me sleep better
Relieve aches and pains in my body using breathwork and active movement
Address long unresolved pain from past running injuries that I’ve battled for over a decade
Her work is unlike anything I’ve experienced before, and if you’re someone who’s made the diet and lifestyle changes but your issues haven’t fully resolved, then I urge you to consider exploring the deep kind of interwork that Sadie offers to help you along your healing journey.
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“Reflection is really important when you’re dealing with adrenal burnout. If you’re asking why and not getting the answer, then find that pattern of who in you feels like it has to show up, even when it’s not in alignment with your self-care and prioritizing your health.”
Read the Episode Transcript...
Naomi Nakamura: Hello, my friends. And welcome to Episode 131 of The Live FAB Life Podcast. I'm your host, Naomi Nakamura. And I'm so happy to be here back with you again.
Now, I know quarantine life has been devastating for so many people, but it's actually been a gift for me in several different ways that I will get into more in next week's episode. But one of the things it has given me is the gift of time to do some inner work that quite frankly, I may never have done otherwise. And some of that inner work has been done with the help of my dear friend, Sadie Adams.
Sadie first appeared on the show back in Episode 117, where we had a discussion on nurturing the actual beauty through calm presence and authentic self-expression. And in that episode, we shared how we came to meet on Instagram.
But since then through all the adjustments that we've had to make for quarantine life, Sadie and I have had the opportunity to work together more quite closely actually. And in this episode, she returns to the show to share some insights and wisdom and just how she's been helping me.
Now, many of Sadie's clients, myself included go to her when Western and holistic approaches to healing just haven't fully quite worked yet and deeper work is required.
And while it is hard to put a name to the work that she does, and we actually discuss that quite in depth in the episode, Sadie draws from her vast education, and her wisdom and her many gifts to help people self-heal with things like re-patterning and embodiment, and truly integrating the body, the mind and the spirit.
Now, we talk a lot about body, mind and spirit, but how do we bring those things together? And that's a lot of the work that she does.
And so using modalities like breath work, and meditation and movement, she helps her clients come back into their bodies to reclaim their presence, to reevaluate their choices and their freedom. So some of the things that she has been helping me with are re-patterning and really seeing my mindset of need to have to, which in turn helps me with relaxation and tapping into my parasympathetic system, which ultimately helps me with sleep, something that you guys know has been a struggle for many years.
She's also been helping me using breath work, and active movement and stretching to relieve some of the aches and pains that I've had within my body. And she's even using these approaches to help me with long unresolved pain from past running injuries that I have battled, some of them for well over a decade.
Her work is unlike anything I've experienced before. And if you're someone who has made the diet and lifestyle changes, but your issues haven't fully resolved, then I urge you to listen to this episode and consider exploring the deep kind of inner work that Sadie offers to help you along your healing journey. So with that, let's get to the show.
Hello, my friend. Welcome back to the show.
Sadie Adams: Thank you so much for inviting me back.
Naomi Nakamura: I was thinking this morning as I was having breakfast, how our friendship has just evolved in this very short time that we've known each other. If folks listened to episode, I think it was 117. That was the first time you appeared on this show. And we talked about how we kind of came to meet over Instagram and I started seeing you for facials. And then with the pandemic hitting, it actually opened the doors for us to work together in other ways as well, starting with your grounding meditation circle, which has led to us doing some one on one work together. And it has really become meaningful for me, especially during this quarantine and helping me put it into perspective and do some inner work that I kind of knew I needed to do, but didn't quite know how to approach it.
So I don't even really know where we're going with this episode, but I know that the work that we do is very important to me and I feel like it can be very helpful for others as well. So I don't even really know what to call the kind of work that we do together. What do you call it?
Sadie Adams: Oh, no. Well, I will answer that at some point. I wonder though, what was your original intention - sleep?
Naomi Nakamura: Right. So actually we started ... well, I always had a curiosity about your meditation circles because you have them in person at Take Care on Monday nights. And I remember a couple of times on my trips down to Southern California, I was so excited because I thought, "Oh, I'm going to be there on a Monday night. I can come to the circle." And then for whatever reason, schedules never worked out. And so I was never able to attend. And once we went into quarantine and you moved it online to Zoom, I was able to attend. So I started attending more out of curiosity and just because again, when we first met, as you know, I was in real burnout. And so I knew I needed to tap into more of my parasympathetic side, which has always been a challenge for me. And that same first week of quarantine, I had a tele-visit set with my functional medicine doctor.
She is also my primary care physician and she was telling me ... because I've been working with her on these issues for well over a year. And she had said, "I really think doing some pranayama breathing would be helpful to you to try and find some relaxation to help you with sleep." And she had sent me a couple of links to some local yoga ... they're not gym's, what do you call them? Yoga centers? And I was like, "Well, if I had a personal relationship with those places before going into quarantine, I guess I would be much more comfortable just dropping in on one of their Zoom sessions." But I didn't and it felt a little awkward for me to try and just go somewhere where I didn't know anybody and had zero connection. But then I remembered that you practice these things and I had reached out to you and asked you if you taught that and you said yes.
And I think that's how we kind of started working together. But from there, it evolved from sleep to addressing some body aches. And that's where you kind of tapped into some of the issues that I might be having going on with my spleen, which was very insightful because that's something that my acupuncturist has been talking to me about for four years now. And then related to spleen, of course, is digestion and something that ... I think we all have digestion issues on some point, we all have got health issues, but that's something that I really have had a history with. And from there it's actually led to unresolved running issues. So we've really been all over the board here.
Sadie Adams: And the last one culminating with you working on your dog.
Naomi Nakamura: Yes. So who knew and you had vet powers too?
Sadie Adams: So I just wanted to say, it is this way with my clients. I'm so blessed to be able to have these kinds of shamanic experiences where even in our facial, it was just this multidimensional experience where you were able to show up in different aspects of yourself and the table when we were able to be present in the flesh together. So I think that experience kind of primed your system for being open to working in different ways. And we really have been able to get quite ... with your dedication and commitment, to cover some ground and to revisit some of your old patterning and injuries and find really practical ways that you can re-pattern, and embody and heal. So I just want to acknowledge you for your curiosity and your commitment to yourself care because every time that we've come up with a new exercise or practice to implement, you really take that in and practice it during the week.
And so you're coming back to the sessions with a lot of feedback and it brings ... to me, it really opens the psychic doors and the visioning is really available because of your tone and your readiness to respond.
Naomi Nakamura: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I think as a coach myself, I know what it's like to have a client who doesn't do the work in between sessions and it makes things a little bit more challenging to work together. So I really try and take my homework to heart and really do that. But I also really do have a natural curiosity. I've always been someone who no matter what I do, I think about ... for example, when I was training for marathons, well, if I just stick to the plan and stick to the training plan that my coach is prescribing for me, what's possible? What can be the outcome here? And I think that's the same approach I take to the work that we do together. I have such this [inaudible 00:09:33] because I've already done all of the "prescribed" things, both from the Western medicine world and from the holistic world as well.
"You have gut issues and you have all these things, well, change your diet." And you change your food and you take supplements and you do all these things, but what happens when you still don't have the results that you're seeking? And that's what it was with sleep for me, I think I told you, I always have a giggle when I'm on Instagram talking about my sleep. And there's someone that comes back and says, "Oh, you should take melatonin." And I'm like, "Oh dear, that started in 2005." It's like I took the sleeping medications. I took the sleeping supplements. I do the meditation before sleep. I do all those things and it hasn't helped. And that was my inclination. And that's why I was so open to my doctor with her prescription of tapping into breathing. Yes, I know there's something deeper there that's preventing me from sleeping and it's going to require deep work. And I've known this for a long time and I just really didn't know where to go with it.
Sadie Adams: Yeah. Oftentimes I get referred clients that are in crisis or have been kind of referred around kind of like a pinball to different practitioners. It's a beautiful aspect of that work because when people come to me in that way, having tried so many things, there's a different humility and openness that is available, I think to both of us, to step in and say, "Well, I don't know. And I'm willing to be present with you for however long that takes."
So when we're looking at our incarnate state, there's so many aspects of karma kind of playing and overlaying at one time. And the way that traditional or allopathic medicine approaches certain things, it's very segmented. And it's like looking through one window or looking through another window. And I find that healing really happens through relationship and through the presence that one brings or two bring.
And what's revealed through that presence is what the medicine is. It's not so much coming from a framework, or a lineage, or more scripted, or prescriptive, it's very collaborative. And in order to collaborate in a holistic way, there's got to be a certain level of embodiment, presence and openness to the higher centers or the realms beyond.
And so my work is kind of this distillation in the present moment of what the client's soul solar intention is. And so I'm really kind of reading off of what will actually land into the client's body mind field. And that is so different and so unique with each person.
And thankfully, I have an education that helps me to kind of template or suggest different adjustments in the body so that the body can help what's trying to come from the client's higher centers ground and integrate through the personality. So it's like, how does the body help the mind integrate the spirit? Type of thing. And the reason why it's so hard to name in terms of a practice as a practitioner is because it is so different. It's really coming from the client.
Naomi Nakamura: You used a word there, embody. What exactly does that mean? And I kind of have an idea, but listeners may not. And so I didn't want to necessarily say the work that you do is embodiment, because I feel like there's so many different aspects to it, but for those who aren't familiar with that, what exactly is that?
Sadie Adams: Well, as you're saying, there's different aspects to it. So off of what I just said, the embodiment would have to do with proactively inviting the soul energy or the intuition, if you will, whatever level you're looking to work with into the personality or into the body. And then if you're looking at this from perspective of movement and body health and healing, it can be more sematic approach wherein the body is actually ... different aspects of the body are actually becoming aware of themselves as sovereign pieces in an integrated whole.
Naomi Nakamura: So when I come to you with my issues with sleep and with body aches, and we even talked about digestion and we really are moving into some issues that I have had for over a decade with my feet, that was the farthest thing from my mind, when we started working together, where do you go, or what tools do you dip into, into thinking or seeing, why is this showing up in someone? And then what are your ways of approaching them?
Sadie Adams: Well, as you're saying that I'm not so sure that I asked myself why as much as-
Naomi Nakamura: I guess I'm asking myself why as we were together. And I'm like, "Why did this happen to me?"
Sadie Adams: Well, exactly. It's this whole thing of how can we hold an inquiry that allows us to increase our capacity for information and intuition without having to understand, or having to know, or having to be in control of something? I'm not trying to put the information into a framework that I necessarily understand, so everything that is coming through is almost as though it's an offering for the client. Like I said, a collaboration, like, what does this mean for you?
And a lot of the information comes through as questions so that the personality and the body can ruminate, and feel, and express and consider things that may have a block. So within the context of the session, we're kind of holding or abiding in a [inaudible 00:15:27] ground that allows for different possibilities that are beyond perhaps what the status quo of the operational system.
It's like we learned how to do it one way and that's the way we do it. And so rather than just being in an operating system, how do we find a more functional, and dynamic and lively present expression that is more open to the arising of new potential in these times that are changing so rapidly?
So it's a lot about adaptability and really the sessions themselves can be an incredible model for people to communicate with themselves on multiple levels, not just the embodiment, be able to differentiate certain things like, what does intuition feel like? What is the personality or the ego personality? Grasping, repelling different tissues, how to navigate, differentiate, and integrate various tissues or organs and why that would be relevant and that we can do it ourselves. So continuing to empower the client and with questions that take them back to themselves and their own contemplation and self care.
Naomi Nakamura: One of the things I really, really appreciate about the work that you do, because it is in my opinion, very high level work, but you bring so much of science and the anatomy into it. You have the skeleton of the foot that you bring into our sessions to explain things to me.
And I think ... I was having this conversation with another friend of mine who's a practitioner. And I feel like right now, especially now there's this divide between Western medicine and holistic medicine. And my personal opinion is that they're all the same, but I think there's maybe just this lack of awareness of our own bodies and even just around our own anatomy, that's actually been my experience. So I appreciate that you bring those things together in such a great way.
But going back to what you were saying, one of the things that we talked about in my very first session that still resonates with me today is this tendency to need to have to, which I wasn't aware that, that is me to a T, but as you brought up these things to my attention, I remember thinking, "How do I be anything different?"
That's how I am and I really don't know any other way to be. But thinking about that and ruminating on how to change that in a way that works for me, these are the experiences that I've had through quarantine and really thinking about those things and observing those things, and my thought process and how I approach really everything from my work, to cleaning my house and to everything. And it's been very insightful.
Sadie Adams: Yeah. That reflection is really important when you're dealing with adrenal burnout. It's like, if you're asking why and you're not getting the answer, then to find that pattern of who in me feels like it has to show up, even when it's not in alignment with my self-care and prioritizing my health. And that can help to tease out where we're being influenced.
So this work is about clarifying our choice making in both perception and participation. So how is what we're perceiving colored? How is that being informed? Whether by the media, or by our families of origin, or a current relationship, who is influencing or what is influencing what we're saying, what we're perceiving? So those are skills that we can learn and that weren't taught in kindergarten.
We were indoctrinated instead into a status quo and adopted therefore, our family of origins working habits, or lack thereof depending. So this is really about reclaiming, not only presence, it's about reclaiming freedom.
Naomi Nakamura: It's so true. Actually about this little after we started working together ... well, you know this, I had my human design reading and learning what my energy type was and how ... quite honestly, for most of my life, I was working out of alignment, living out of alignment of that. And when I had my reading and I learned that actually, this is your gifts, and this is your way and your approach to life, it was almost like this sense of relief and validation of who I actually felt I was inside but not how I was showing up. And it was a sense of being seen and just validation. And I think it really hit home and complemented the work that you and I do together because it was so supportive of that.
Sadie Adams: Well, one of the really powerful things about human design is that human design really encourages people to align with themselves. And that's a new trend in our society. It's thankfully starting to trend that if you are in alignment with your intention and working to understand what that is in terms of what you're looking to create for yourself and living your design, as they say, then by default you're supporting that in others.
Even if those other people are used to a different dynamic from you and their personality may be feeling compromised by your choice of taking care of yourself, in the long run it does serve them because you're releasing some codependent dynamics and some again, operating systems that may be outmoded and replacing them gradually with more functional systems. And the only thing we can do is work on ourselves.
And that's a beautiful thing is that we have this body and this is what we can be accountable for. And we can really allow everyone else, their experience, and their practice, and their process without meddling in it. We can live by design. We can live our design. We can live as an example and radiate from a place of support where we feel supported by our own sense of self and our connection to nature. And that's really invaluable right now. If there's one thing that I've learned over the past two months is how far that intention has taken me for being able to stay present with all of these changes.
Naomi Nakamura: It's a feeling of a release of tension. I feel as we come to learn these things about ourselves and come more into alignment, there's definitely less angst, I guess in our angst, at least that's been my experience.
Sadie Adams: Well, and that's the answer to your question about what is embodiment. It's about really being in relationship to the body and respecting the body as what it is instead of a slave to your mind or that the body has its own process too. And that this is a relationship, and that there's choices on so many different levels.
So how do we co-create with our bodies and step forward and activate and process karma or whatever the intention for the life steps are? That the embodiment is learning how to listen to the guidance and wisdom of the body and that does also mean that whole concept of being able to differentiate fight, flight, freeze from presence and intuition, as it is expressed through the body.
Naomi Nakamura: So some of the things that we do in our work together as we do a lot of breathing exercises and movement from different stretches or otherwise, can you talk to some of those things?
Sadie Adams: Sure. The breathing exercises are really incredible right now because they're a really beautiful way into modulate our own nervous systems at times where we're not getting the body work we're normally get. I had a client share that he was having a rough time with not ... he's quarantined alone and not being touched. And it was just a simple cue of, "Well, there's other ways to sooth the nervous system." And so when we know that agitation, we're looking to get it from the outside, how can we actually make some adjustments in either our posture or self-care that can help the nervous system receive what it needs?
The same way that we would care for a baby, maybe a baby we just met. We don't know very well. So we're really looking to listen a little deeper. And I think with busy minds, the breathing exercises can get us into that place where we can be a little more receptive or the nervous system can calm down and organize a little bit more than normal. So we can hear our intuition or nature.
Naomi Nakamura: I have new found respect for the breathing exercises. I had a lot of tension in my body and I would get monthly massages at my gym. Obviously, that's not happening right now. And I haven't had one in two or three months, but every time after our sessions, I felt like I had one because they feel like the breathing exercises really helped release a lot of that tension that otherwise the massage would have. I remember telling one of my friends that and she just could not comprehend that. And I said, "I don't know how to explain it to you and he anymore, but that's really what it feels like to me."
Sadie Adams: It was a simple act of breathing and allowing that mechanism to give us the transmission. We were talking about it in circle, just with our breath or the ability to open and close our hands, we're learning about letting go and resetivity and relationship. There's so many transmissions and symbols and everything.
So there's that and then also the way that we're working as you pointed out, is relatively sophisticated in that we're not only doing the breathing, that there's a wisdom transmission being shared throughout the session that's coming from some place else. And on top of that, we have the various layers of the intelligence of the embodiment coming forward, both my body and your body, and the adjustments and the minor adjustments and the amount of kind of unseen support that comes in that I would think is slightly different than looking at the breathing exercise from a book or something.
That being said, I have a lot of respect from these ancient wisdom traditions and the yoga philosophies and practices. And there is a simplicity to a lot of them. A lot of them are kept a little closer because they can be pretty radical.
That said, the ones that are circulating generally now, as you were saying, as long as we practice them, like you're practicing what the coach says, that there's something that will be revealed. It just so happens that working with a skilled practitioner can open the field in a different way for you, so you're able to receive that a little bit more immediately,
Naomi Nakamura: One of the things that we're working on that it really does blow my mind is that having trained for marathons for many years, I had feet pain for so long. It has been over a decade since I had been able to wear heels. And I'm someone who had a whole closet full of heels and then became someone who has a whole closet full of just running shoes, because that's the only kind of shoe that my feet could tolerate.
And I don't even know how we came to talk about it or to work about it in our sessions, I think I might've mentioned that I had some heel pain, but as we do the work together ... and I really want you to talk more about this is, I discovered that the three middle toes on my feet have no feeling.
They have a brain of their own. They're totally disconnected from the other toes on my feet. And as we do these exercises, I can't get them to do what it is that we want them to do. It's kind of mind blowing to me because I never in a million years would have even been aware of that or made that connection.
Sadie Adams: Well, how we live in our body and think about our body it has an effect. And our feet have for the most part, been in shoes. Many people are not keen to walk outside bare foot. Like today, I went to go release a fly and I was going to put my Birkenstocks on. And then it was like, "Oh, wait, I'm going out into my yard. I can step on [inaudible 00:28:17]."
And so it's just how indoctrinated we are into this kind of culture. And what happens in these kinds of indoctrinations and entrainments is that we get kind of dumbed or numbed. And so, yeah, that is what's happening, when we go and look at the feet and we just assume that, okay, the toes are there. We don't know why they're there or that they end where the skin ends but really the metatarsals go all the way up into the arch.
And so that's a radical different kind of way of thinking about the mechanism in design of the foot. And so Thursday, when we were working together, it was like you were overworking in one area and we did some adjustments. And the cues have to do with developmental anatomy or different aspects of support proceeding movement, and the muscles kind of taking over so that the ligaments weren't able to feel the spaces between the bones or help to actually inform the muscles.
The muscles had cut themselves off from that information and therefore, limited themselves in what is possible in terms of your dexterity and movement. They're just kind of in a holding pattern and not able to receive the support from the specificity and all of the other intelligence of the body, they're just kind of cut off.
And so this is really about reclaiming that kind of holistic wisdom of the body. And once we're doing that physiologically through the body, then it becomes much easier to self-express in that way into society, because it's like we have the body already holding that vibration for us so that when we're going into make boundaries or be contrarian, that there's a support because it connected to a design that came before all of those overlays of tension and patterns that maybe were optimal for the moment. And then they kind of just went on their own trajectory and took aspects of the body with them and left other aspects behind.
Naomi Nakamura: That's very deep work, my friend. Very, very deep work, but I think the right people, it's just so powerful for those who are ready for it.
Sadie Adams: Well, I'm happy to be of service to those who are curious.
Naomi Nakamura: So on that note, how can people connect with you and learn more?
Sadie Adams: So my website is takecarebody.com. And the Instagram is takecare.bodymind. And there is a link tree there that shares about the ground space meditation circles, and-
Naomi Nakamura: Those happen twice a week.
Sadie Adams: They happen twice a week and there'll be more ... there'll be an opportunity to sign up for our newsletter and more events as we re-emerge.
Naomi Nakamura: And I'll be sure to link to all of those things in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom with us. You have so many gifts to offer, and I'm so happy to be able to share them with people who listen to the show.
Sadie Adams: Well, likewise sister. It's so nice to work with someone so gifted and so enthusiastic about life, and health and love. And I'm really grateful to have been included in the show and to be a friend, so thanks.
Naomi Nakamura: Likewise. Thank you.
Naomi Nakamura is a Functional Nutrition Health Coach. She helps passionate, ambitious high-achievers who are being dragged down by fatigue, burnout, sugar cravings, poor sleep, unexplained weight issues, and hormonal challenges optimize health, find balance, and upgrade their energy so they can do big things in this world.
Through her weekly show, The Live FAB Live Podcast, programs, coaching, and services, she teaches women how to optimize their diet, support their gut health, reduce their toxic load, and improve their productivity, bringing work + wellness together.
Naomi resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can often be found exploring the area with her puppy girl, Coco Pop!
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